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Brenda Gilbert
NOTE: This page is not free to edit. Characters are solely owned by ScottyBlue (dA name Ascotia-Bluefleck. Also, Spoilers below.) Brenda Judith Gilbert, '''nee Fallon, and later '''Brenda Hill, was a young woman who lived in a small town in the North Carolina mountains. Brenda Fallon was only 19 when her domineering father married her off to Jack Gilbert, a 35-year-old man who had been elected mayor of Stearnsville. However, Jack revealed himself to be delusional and mentally unstable, and several months after his election and his marriage, found himself unable to deal with the stresses of life and took his own life. Unfortunately for Brenda, only she and Cletus Hill, a childhood friend, knew of Jack's mental instability, and she was haunted by rumors that she'd done away with him for his money, faking the suicide. Cletus and Brenda started walking out, but the budding romance had Cletus' rich and snobbish mother Elvira come down on it like a ton of bricks almost at once. Cletus didn't want to put Brenda through more pain, so they agreed to stop seeing each other. Cletus went away to college, and later away to war, where he was captured and tortured before being rescued and brought back a broken man. While Cletus was gone, the attractive Brenda was sought out by Luke Cromarty, who she did not care for but who convinced her that only he would go out with her since no one else trusted her. However, she received a warning from another friend, Ross DeAndrea, that Luke was nice on the outside but secretly a selfish and cruel man, and would make her miserable if she continued to go out with him. Therefore, she broke off the romance, which proved to make a dangerous enemy of Luke. Cletus had been avoiding Brenda all this time because he was afraid that he could only do her harm now that he was mentally unstable like her first husband, thanks to being shell-shocked. However, Brenda sought him out and confided to him that she still loved him, and had always loved him. The pair secretly began walking out again, and Brenda helped Cletus slowly recover. Luke found out, and began blackmailing them out of revenge, first threatening to tell Elvira about them. When they told Elvira themselves to get Luke's power off of them, Luke, not to be denied his revenge, threatened to use his influence to either get Brenda arrested for the murder of her husband or get Cletus shut up in a bad sanatorium for life. Brenda Gilbert paid Luke, and so did Cletus, until they had nothing left. Luke then said they could pay him back by helping him get Ross DeAndrea fired from his job. Both Cletus and Brenda were appalled by the idea and refused utterly. Brenda confronted Luke alone, afraid the unstable Cletus might lash out if Luke used force. When she told him to do his worst, Luke, enraged, tried to choke her. Brenda grabbed the nearest weapon - a poker - and struck him several times before fleeing. When Brenda told Cletus what happened, he flew into a panic that Luke might be dead and they might be arrested for murder, and ran back to the meeting place. Before they got there, they found Luke's father Herb Cromarty lying dead in the street. Someone had seen Brenda fighting Luke but mistaken Luke for Herb, and she was arrested for the murder. Though she was later acquitted when evidence overwhelmingly proved her innocence, Cletus had an utter breakdown from the ordeal, and Brenda got him committed to a good sanatorium and stayed by his side until he recovered. Ross DeAndrea had a mountain of evidence against him to prove he had probably killed Cromarty and stole his money, and he was hanged for the crime. Cletus and Brenda didn't want to believe their friend had done it, but could see no reason to believe otherwise. They fled to South Carolina to get away from Luke, though he seemed to have forgotten about them, anyway. There, they lived many happy years together, during which time Brenda bore Cletus four children. However, she passed away at a relatively young age from polio, but her loving children made sure their father didn't have too much of a mental breakdown from the grief. Cletus would later learn DeAndrea had been posthumously cleared of the crime, as well, which news he told Brenda at her gravesite.Category:In Memory of Frankie Hill Characters